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David Bowie — The
Next Day
Best track: I’d
Rather Be High Yeah Yeah Yeahs —
Mosquito
Best track: Subway Kurt Vile — Wakin
on a Pretty Daze
Best track: Girl
Called Alex The Knife —
Shaking the Habitual
Best track:
Full of Fire
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"Here I am, not
quite dying," David Bowie shouts on the chorus of the title
track of The Next Day, his first album in 10 years. The album
offers many sides of the multi-faceted artist and almost all of them
mesmerising, as the songs grow richer with each listen. Like all of
Bowie’s best material, The Next Day is strange and
otherworldly, but imbued with some gorgeous melodies. Long-time
producer Tony Visconti and the expert session musicians who brought
life to Heathen (2002) and Reality (2003) return to
inject the album with joyful noise. Lyrically, Bowie is still a master
of narrative and mood. In the unsettlingly upbeat Valentine’s Day,
he plays witness to a school shooting, "Valentine told me who’s
to go.... The teachers and the football star." I’d
Rather Be High is Bowie’s catchiest number since New Killer
Star and one that embraces refutation at all costs. "I’d
rather be high/ I’d rather be flying/ I’d rather be dead or out of
my head than training my guns at those men in the sand," goes
its revolutionary verse. The album’s penultimate track "You
Feel So Lonely You Could Die" is a classically styled rock
ballad that ends with the opening drums of Five Years from Ziggy
Stardust and The Spiders from Mars. Dancing Out In Space
opens with a drum pattern reminiscent of the 1983’s Modern Love,
before the intro swirls into something altogether different. Glorious
deep backing vocals juxtapose with Bowie’s vocals to beautiful
effect. Welcome back, David.
The trio of singer Karen
O, guitarist Nick Zinner, and drummer Brian Chase don’t quite return
to the raw indie rock that made them stars a decade ago but instead
turn over new stones. Sacrilege sets a high precedent for the
album. It’s a low-tempo return to their early punk sound, where out
of nowhere, a 24-piece gospel choir shows up, chanting "Sacrilege
you say." Despair is endearing and detail-oriented,
and features powerful vocals and melodies from Karen while the moody Subway
has the most creative sample the band has ever put to tape. Slave
flaunts a more obvious reggae walk that ushers in the brilliantly
distorted whine of Zinner’s guitar. More up-tempo tracks feature new
elements as well, including the digital drum machined title track and Buried
Alive, a reverb-heavy collaboration with James Murphy of LCD
Soundsystem and the rapper Kool Keith in his Dr Octagon appearance.
The album’s most sublime moment comes in the form of Always
that unfolds into glittering rhythm with echoed handclaps. On
Wedding Song, the album’s last track, Karen finds herself among
angels, fulfilling the sentimental need for Yeah Yeah Yeahs fans and
giving her the chance yet again to bare her heart.
Kurt Vile’s fifth
album, Wakin on a Pretty Daze, suggests the Philly rocker is
well aware of where he is heading to what his audience wants from him.
Opening title track has Kurt at his most accomplished, with forlorn
vocals and an immaculate arrangement of ponderous guitars. At nine
minutes long, it finds him in no hurry to make his point. The guitar
riffs are consistently pleasant, as are Kurt’s calm, ragged vocals. Never
Run Away has a hand-clapping catchiness that shines through its
rather casual rendering. A measure of Kurt’s confidence can be heard
on Snowflakes Are Dancing. Its gorgeous, dreamy stroll is
indicative of the building pace of the album. In the loping Girl
Called Alex, he proclaims, "I want to live all the time in my
fantasy infinity." Accompanied by electronic waves of guitar and
synthesisers, he draws out lyrics to great effect and produces one of
the most enjoyable and surprisingly upbeat songs on the album,
Shame Chamber. Goldtone, the closing track, features
vocalist Jennifer Herrema, who comes close to matching the beauty of Baby’s
Arms featuring Meg Baird. Layers of swooning guitar and soft
steady vocals are poised to conjure memories of where you first
connected with the lucid swirls and psychedelic sounds of Kurt’s
previous albums.
On their fourth studio
album, the Swedish brother-sister duo Karin Dreijer Andersson and Olof
Dreijer don’t change their habits as much as they push themselves to
the extreme. Far from a pop album, Shaking the Habitual is the
length of your average movie, with several tracks hovering around the
10-minute mark and one number, Old Dreams Waiting to be Realized,
reaching almost 20 minutes. Opener Tooth for An Eye leads us
into this uncompromising world relatively lightly, despite a convoy of
warped vocals and percussion played on bicycle spokes. Cherry on
Top takes a turn for the unexpected when it adopts a spiritual
tone and a cathedral-like setting, with smudged-out organs, Chinese
vocal tones and superimposed futuristic soundscape. Lead single Full
of Fire is a case in point: nine minutes of crusty, shuddering
beats and buzzing electronic textures that evoke with Karin’s heavy
vocals, building up the pressure. Heartbeats niggles with a
perfect sweetness, while Marble House and We Share Our
Mother’s Health course with icy adrenaline. The album increases
in tempo, through tracks such as Without You in My Life. With
their innovative production, bizarre lyrics and pitch-bending vocal
style The Knife are one of the most fascinating electronic acts
in modern music.